This invention relates to a substrate handling technology in an apparatus for manufacturing a semiconductor such as LSI, for example. More particularly, the present invention is suitably usable in a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus such as a processing apparatus, a cleaning apparatus or an inspection apparatus, for example, for performing a certain process for semiconductor manufacture in which a substrate (plate-like article) such as a mask or a reticle (hereinafter, xe2x80x9creticlexe2x80x9d), or a silicon wafer or a glass plate (hereinafter, xe2x80x9cwaferxe2x80x9d) is handled to be treated.
Semiconductor manufacturing processes use various semiconductor manufacturing apparatuses for performing various operations in the processes. The semiconductor manufacture is carried out in a clean room in which the cleanness is kept extraordinarily high. Particularly, as regards an apparatus for a certain process such as an exposure process in which very strict dust-particle control is required, an environment of highest cleanness of an order of 0.1-0.2 micron particle diameter (Class 1) must be maintained.
In the case of a system in which a clean room as a whole is cleaned by xe2x80x9cdown flowxe2x80x9d, it needs use of a huge air-conditioning machine and, thus, the equipment cost and the running cost are very large. In consideration of it, the concept of local cleaning wherein, only in a limited small space, the cleanness is to be improved, has been developed. A representative example is the concept of mini-environment, called SMIF (Standardized Mechanical Inter-Face) or FOUP (Front Opening Unified Pod), such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,532,970, 4,534,389, and 4,616,683.
Where the concept of mini-environment is employed, however, the cleanness of the clean room itself is not improved. For example, it might be of an order of 0.3 micron particle diameter (Class 1000). This raises another problem. The semiconductor manufacturing apparatuses require frequent maintenance to keep their performance, and the inside space of a chamber has to be opened often. For example, in an exposure apparatus, there are some items such as a wafer chuck which need a daily maintenance. Thus, when the chamber is kept opened for a long time for such maintenance, there is a possibility of contamination of the chamber by small particles contained in the air entered into the chamber from the clean room. If, for example, there is a substrate in process which is left in the apparatus, the surface of the substrate may be contaminated by the chamber opening.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to prevent contamination of a substrate inside an apparatus where the environment control for the chamber inside space is suspended due to the maintenance operation or the like.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, comprising: a chamber having an environment-controlled inside space; a stage disposed in the inside space of said chamber and for holding a substrate to perform a predetermined process to the substrate; a temporary storage for temporarily storing one or more substrates in a local environment being independent from the chamber inside; a robot for conveying a substrate between said stage and said temporary storage; and a controller for controlling said robot so that the substrate is stored into said temporary storage when the environment control of the chamber inside space is suspended.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, comprising: a chamber having an inside space; a stage for holding a substrate to perform a predetermined process to the substrate; a temporary storage disposed in the inside space of said chamber, for temporarily storing one or more substrates in a local environment being independent from the chamber inside; and a robot for conveying a substrate between said stage and said temporary storage.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a semiconductor manufacturing method, comprising the steps of: introducing a substrate into a chamber having an environment-controlled inside space; performing a process for semiconductor manufacture to the substrate; temporarily storing the substrate into a buffer space, which is defined in the chamber inside space and in which a local environment control is performed independently from the chamber inside space, in a predetermined period in which the predetermined process is not carried out; and unloading the substrate having been treated by the predetermined process, out of the chamber.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent upon a consideration of the following description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.